


Ghost

by Keldae



Series: Cornerstone [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Backstory, Childhood Trauma, Gen, PTSD, Post-Sacking of Coruscant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 17:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16877142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keldae/pseuds/Keldae
Summary: Even after the Sith left Coruscant, the wounds they left behind struggle to heal. One little survivor from the Jedi Temple knows this more than anyone else.





	1. Chapter 1

_1 ATC_   
_Coruscant_   
_Somewhere in the Works_

* * *

Rumour had it that even before the Sith had attacked Coruscant and destroyed the Jedi Temple, the Works had been a dangerous place to be for anyone. Cthons and the odd vicious droid ruled most of the shafts and tubes that made up the sector, when they weren’t driven off by the biggest, meanest smugglers and thugs on Coruscant. This was no place for a child to be.

For the eight-year-old girl sitting in the gaping maw of a broken ventilation shaft that might once have carried smoke or toxic waste from some other district into the still-deeper bowels of the city planet, it was the only home she’d had for a year.  
  
The Jedi were destroyed and the Sith had killed everyone good on the planet. Everyone knew this, and nobody knew it more than the mute little girl with the matted red hair, gnawing on a ration bar that had seen better days. She’d seen it all happen, of course. But she couldn’t tell anyone. If the Sith found out that they’d missed someone who’d escaped the burning Jedi Temple through the sublevels right before it fell, they’d come after her and kill her, and then there wouldn’t be  _any_  more Jedi left at all. The child felt the heavy weight of being the last survivor of her kind settle onto her tiny shoulders and shivered, drawing her ratty blanket up over her. She still had bad nightmares about that day a year ago, when everyone she knew had been killed by the red ‘saber blades, and usually woke up shaking and silently crying. But she’d learned real fast to not scream, no matter how scary the dreams were. Noises got attention down here, and not the good attention either, so she’d learned to be completely silent like a ghost - she hadn’t said a single word since the day of the Sacking, and the last thing she’d screamed had been her best friend’s name as a pillar fell on her. She hadn’t been old enough for a real lightsaber when the Temple fell, which meant she didn’t have any way to fight here. All she could do if she got in trouble was run and hide… but she was real good at that!  
  
The child who’d once been known as Xaja Taerich finished her last bit of the ration bar, chewing it slowly. It tasted terrible, all dusty and oily and it felt like duracrete in her mouth, but it was the first thing she’d had to eat since yesterday morning. At least, she thought it was yesterday. There wasn’t any sun down here, or any clocks, so she guessed what day it was based on her hunger and her sleepiness. It had been a lot of days since the rest of the Jedi died, so she figured it might’ve been a year. Rumours (what she could hear from the big, mean thugs anyway, before they noticed her and tried to catch her to do bad things with her that happened to all the other little girls or boys they caught) said that the Sith had left after killing the Jedi and the Chancellor, but Xaja didn’t quite trust that. The Sith could be anywhere, just waiting to find the one Jedi Youngling they’d missed in their terrible attack.  
  
When Xaja got bigger and stronger, she’d fight off all the bad thugs and get out of the scary (but probably the safest) parts of Coruscant that she haunted. Maybe she’d see if there was a lightsaber or something in the Temple ruins that she could find and use, and then she’d pay back the Sith for what they did to her and to everyone she’d ever known. But first, it was time to sneak off to see if she could find or steal some more food for the day. If she could get something for tomorrow too, that was even better.  
  
Neatly folding her precious blanket and hiding it in a recessed corner of the shaft with two equally-precious water bottles (some lessons from the Jedi’s teachings lingered, after all), Xaja crept out of her little hiding place, taking a good hard look and listen for any nearby rivals. She heard nothing, saw no movement in the shadows, and most importantly sensed nothing with her mind - the Force had probably been the one thing keeping her alive this entire year. With a well-practiced bit of careful maneuvering, the tiny redhead wriggled her way to the topside of the shaft and scampered along the metal surface. She feared many things, but after having spent this long using the Force to keep her balance on here, falling to her death or crippling wasn’t one of them. She had a secret shortcut that she knew about that would get her to the Old Galactic Market - and that place was every bit as dangerous as the Works, in its own way. At least in the Works, she didn’t have to worry (too much) about getting shot or getting chased off by Republic security forces, who only ever saw a little street rat and not a one-time Jedi Youngling. The Works, she just had to worry about being kidnapped and disappearing like the few other children she’d seen, or maybe mauled to death and eaten by a cthon. The same risks were here, with an increased risk of gang cross-fire and a notably lower chance of being devoured by the local wildlife.  
  
Xaja crept through the end of her tunnel, blinking in the brighter lights of the old market. There were lots of people around today, which meant she had a higher risk of being caught and taken away, but a better chance of finding some credits or some food to eat. And there - her first pick of the day, a Nautolan who looked like he was sleeping off stims. On silent feet, Xaja padded over to the alien and rifled through the pouch on his belt. Two credits - not very much at all, but it was something. The little girl put her find in her pocket, and scampered off into the shadows, already eyeing her next target. A spacer like the one who just came swaggering by would be dangerous if she was caught, but they sometimes had lots of credits or things to trade. Carefully, Xaja snuck up behind the spacer, reached for the pocket of his expensive-looking coat, and felt her fingers close on… a ration bar? And was this one of the meal packets that had a sweet dessert thing in it? This was-  
  
“Hey!” The spacer had felt Xaja’s hand and whirled; the little girl only barely dodged the outstretched fingers trying to grab her by her hair and raced off, clutching her prize like a lifeline. Heart pounding, the child darted past a group of gang members (and that insignia meant Black Sun, right?), then raced around a corner and hid behind a pile of rubble. The spacer came running around the corner a second later, furiously looking around for any sign of the little pickpocket. “A'right, you little ghost, get back here an’ maybe I won’t shoot ya…”  
  
Instinct told Xaja to flee. Experience told her to stay right where she was and to not move a muscle. The pile of metal and duracrete was just big enough to hide her if she stayed very, very still and didn’t draw attention to herself. She watched through a hole in the rubble as the spacer looked around, glowering for a moment, then patted his now-empty pocket. “And I was looking forward to that meal,” he grumbled, then stormed off.  
  
Xaja silently breathed out in relief, then eyed her prize. It was a little smushed now, but it was better than a ration bar- this was a proper travel meal! Those were super hard to get since they were so expensive, but they tasted way better than anything else Xaja had had in the last year. That prize went into her filthy tunic where she couldn’t drop it or lose it to another thief, and she waited a few more minutes before creeping back out to go continue her thieving for the day.  
  
The Jedi taught its students that theft was wrong. But there were no more Masters to protect the one surviving Jedi student. Xaja was all alone now, and she’d learned the hard way fast that if she didn’t break some of the Jedi rules, she would die.  _Live to grow up and destroy the Sith. Then you can be a real Jedi again and follow all the rules. But you gotta live first._  And if that meant a life of silence and thieving and sleeping in abandoned pipes, well, that’s what it meant.  
  
For a minute, Xaja felt a deep pang of sadness that she was the only Jedi alive that she knew about, grief so deep she didn’t even have words for it, but it made her feel like she was going to throw up for a minute. She sniffled once, then wiped a grimy hand across her eyes. Jedi don’t cry, even if they’re the last Jedi alive, and street kids cry even less. She had to survive still, and she couldn’t do that if she was looking weak and sniffly like a baby. She clambered to her feet, snuck out from behind her little shelter, and disappeared into the crowd again… one more red-haired wraith in the shadows trying to survive. 


	2. Chapter 2

The child snatchers had gotten really persistent in the last long while. Xaja thought it had been at least a whole ‘nother year since the Sacking, maybe even two. During that time she’d watched most of the other children sleeping rough like her be taken away. Sometimes they’d been hauled off by people wearing dark blue uniforms, who all looks business-like and stern - once she’d even seen soldiers taking away one of the older, bigger boys. He’d been twelve and made sure everyone knew it so they didn’t bother him none, but soldiers didn’t care about that. Sometimes though, it was people without uniforms, people who felt wrong in the Force - all oily and dark and with cruel grins that felt like Sith, even though almost none of them were Force-sensitive. Children in their clutches were taken away rougher, sometimes with sacks on their heads or needles put in their arms to make them quiet.

Either way, no matter who took them, those kids were never seen again by anyone, and rumours said something about either 'social services’ or 'slave rings’. Xaja had a personal interest in making sure she never found out where exactly they went- she’d learned that strange things like that weren’t to be trusted, and the only way she would be anywhere near okay was if she ran faster and hid better than any of the grownups chasing her.

So far, it had served her well. But she was going to need to get even faster or better at hiding if she was going to get away from the one who’d been chasing her for months now. He was a Zabrak, with dark tattoos on his face and grimy green clothing, and he felt as dark and scary to Xaja’s mind as the Sith who’d cut down one of her best friends in front of her in the Temple ruins. He’d almost caught her once several months ago, him and a big human pal of his, and Xaja still wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get her little hands wrapped around a hold-out blaster that had been in the human’s belt. But when she’d fired one shot, the human had fallen with a hole in his stomach and the Force cold and empty around him, and the Zabrak had been shocked motionless long enough that Xaja had been able to escape.

She’d promptly thrown up as soon as she was far enough away, and then spent the rest of the night and the next few days hiding and running away until she had to go thieving for food again. She would never be able to use a blaster again without remembering her first traumatic kill.

Now she was crouched behind a shipping container in the Old Galactic Market’s loading docks, watching gang members and spacers meandering around. The Zabrak was somewhere in the crowd, hunting for her, but she thought he was somewhere behind her. She needed to get somewhere safe where he or anybody else couldn’t find her, and this little shelter wasn’t going to do it. Maybe if she could hide in a container, or…

There wasn’t anyone in that ship over there, was there? Xaja glanced around, then scampered to the freighter, darting up the ramp and taking a cautious peek back out. Nobody shouting at or about her, nobody walking inside the ship or up to the loading ramp. But there - she could just see the back of the Zabrak’s head in the crowd, horns swivelling as he looked for her or another victim. Xaja cowered further into the ship, and squeaked as she slipped into an open floor compartment.  _Well, nobody’ll find me here,_  she decided, looking around the box she’d fallen into, and curled up in the shadows. _I’ll just wait, an’ go when he leaves._

But the fatigue of the last few days of constantly fleeing from close pursuit without taking the time to eat much of anything soon caught up, and the little girl fell asleep in the hidden hold.

* * *

“Cap'n!” A yell jolted Xaja awake, one that sounded entirely too close for comfort. “We got ourselves a stowaway here!” A big pair of hands grabbed the little girl and pulled her into the light, earning a terrified squeak and frenzied squirming as the tiny captive realized what was happening. She’d fallen asleep and now she was in a ship belonging to the bad people she was constantly running from!! She managed to find purchase in the smuggler’s wrist with her teeth and bit down as hard as she could, earning a yowl for her troubles, but the grip on her only tightened, preventing escape.

“The hell is-” Another voice (this one female) broke in, accompanied by pounding footsteps. “… What the hell is a kid doin’ on my ship?”

“Dunno, Cap'n! I just found it!” Xaja felt herself being roughly shaken by the person holding her. “An’ it’s bitin’ me! I think it’s got rabies or somethin’.”

“I’d be bitin’ you too if you had me like that!” barked a third voice, another man. “Let the kid go, it ain’t like it can go anywhere in here.”

The hands released Xaja, and she fell back against a wall, frantically crawling backwards as though she could meld with the durasteel hull. There were four people staring at her – a Mon Cal rubbing his sore wrist and glaring at her; an older-looking Zabrak with grey hair in a nerftail and a perplexed expression; a scrawny human with a shock of green spiky hair; and a Mirialan woman with an expression Xaja couldn’t read, but felt looked displeased. She cowered into her tiny corner, forcefully trying to not cry even though this was the second- no, third-most-scared she’d ever been in her young life.

“…  _It_  is a girl,” the Zabrak finally said, scratching his head. He looked a bit gentler than the one who’d been hunting Xaja, but he still scared her. “The hell’s a little girl doin’ by herself like this?”

“Lotsa kids in the rougher parts of Coruscant,” said the green-haired human with a shrug. “Folks died or run off durin’ the war, probably.”

“That true?” the Mirialan said, looking at Xaja. “Where are your parents, kid?”

 _Parents?_  Jedi children don’t have parents! Xaja looked up at the woman and mutely shook her head. “You ain’t got parents or you ain’t gonna tell us?” Another head shake. “… You got a voice?” A shrug. “You got a name?” Another shrug. “How old are you?” Shrug. “You understand what I’m sayin’?” A frantic nod.

The Mirialan sighed. “Well, she understands Basic, at least. Looks like she ain’t had a meal in months, either.”

“What’re we doin’ then, turnin’ back around to Coruscant?” questioned the Zabrak. “She might have parents lookin’ for her.”

“With how ratty she looks? If she’s got parents, they probably ain’t missin’ her,” responded the green-haired human.

“Don’t blame 'em,” growled the Mon Cal. “Let’s throw it in a pod an’ be done with it.”

“ _It_  is a little girl,” snapped the Mirialan, “and she probably only bit you 'cos she’s scared! We ain’t throwin’ her in a pod!”

“But we don’t got room in here for another mouth t’ feed,” said the one Xaja now was calling Green, a frown on his face. “'Specially not a mouth that can’t earn its keep. We can’t take charity cases like this.”

“But we can’t just leave her!” the Zabrak insisted. “Look at her, she can’t be more than eight years old. She ain’t gonna last long on her own!”

 _I can last a long time by myself!_  Xaja silently thought.  _I’ve been all alone for a long time already!_  But she didn’t dare speak that out loud - she didn’t dare say anything out loud. She hadn’t for a really long time. Silence was safer.

The Mirialan thought for a long moment and sighed. “Our next port’s Ord Mantell. There’s a Republic base near the drop point. Maybe they’ll find some farmer an’ his family to adopt her. Y'like the sound of that, kid?” she added, apparently addressing Xaja. “Ord Mantell, where there’s real trees an’ rivers and none a’ Coruscant’s towers an’ sublevels. You’re gonna love it.”

An’ a civil war brewin’,“ the Zabrak darkly muttered.

"Come off it, the separatists ain’t gonna amount to anythin’ big. That’ll blow over soon enough.” The Mirialan held a hand out to Xaja, and sighed when the child flinched away. “C'mon, kiddo. You look like you need a decent meal or six, and a few hours in a sonic shower. We ain’t got much, but we can give you that, at least.”

The little redhead hesitated, looking up at the Mirialan captain and her crew (and flinching when she saw the Mon Cal’s dark glare) before slowly crawling to the captain’s side. She hadn’t wanted to give in so quick, but she hadn’t eaten anything in three days and her tummy hurt so badly that she’d just about go to the bad Zabrak if he gave her a meal. But the Mirialan lady felt… not quite good, but she wasn’t bad either, and Xaja didn’t think she was dangerous.

Desperation was enough to overwhelm fear, it seemed. 


	3. Chapter 3

Surprisingly, the smuggler crew had kept to their word, and a standard day after Xaja had been found hiding in a storage compartment, she was set down near Fort Garnik on Ord Mantell, now sporting a new oversized shirt (from the Zabrak, whose name was Morkan), a jacket that Green (whose real name was Jak) said was too small for him now anyway, and a small handful of credits and ration bars from the captain (name of Resil. The Mon Cal had been introduced as Turo, and had glared at Xaja any time he’d seen her that entire day.). “There’s a Republic outpost in town here,” Captain Resil had said as she guided the child off the ship. “You go there an’ tell ‘em… somehow… that you’re an orphan an’ they’ll make sure you’re looked after. There’s lotsa farmer families here who’d welcome a new daughter, I think.”

Xaja didn’t know that she wanted a family - the Jedi had been her family, and there weren’t any more left. But someone to make sure she had food and wasn’t gonna get killed or snatched was hopeful, and so she’d only nodded seriously when Resil had ruffled her hair in parting. “Take care of yourself, kiddo.”

 _I’ll do that. I know how to do that._ She’d waited until the spacers had left back to their hangar before scurrying into the town, and did eventually find the military outpost… just in time to hear furious shouting from within. It sounded like someone had screwed up bad and their commander was pretty upset. It was certainly enough to send Xaja scurrying into an alleyway, terrified and shaking at this new planet. If the Works of Coruscant had been scary, Ord Mantell’s strangeness was terrifying. About the only good thing Xaja had found so far was a distinct lack in homicidal droids and hungry cthons. But there were soldiers everywhere; even though this was the Republic, Xaja was too afraid of the soldiers to go near them. Soldiers hadn’t been nice to the street kids they’d caught on Coruscant.

Xaja knew two things right now. She still remembered how to be a Jedi – the lessons of the Masters were not easily forgotten. But the Sith had killed all the Jedi. She couldn’t risk letting the Sith find out that they’d missed one. So she tucked away those Jedi lessons and resorted to the only other thing she knew how to do – steal, and run, and hide. Soldiers were bad targets to steal from, but there were enough civilians around that she could get by. She felt guilty for stealing from them, but she was so hungry and cold, and so afraid of the grownups… it was her only option, really.

About two weeks after being left on Ord Mantell, she crouched in the shadows, watching her newest target. He wasn’t quite a grownup yet, but was too big to be a kid, with a bulky red jacket and spiky brown hair. And he looked like he was bored out of his mind. The man with him couldn’t be his father, Xaja reasoned, not when that man was darker of skin and shorter. She didn’t know why they were together, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t her business. And bad things happened to kids who poked into others’ business.

While the not-father was chatting with another man (another human, with short grey hair and a dark jacket), Xaja crept up behind the teenager. He was trying to be attentive, but she could sense his concentration lapsing with his boredom. Cautiously, she snuck up and reached for his pocket. There, she could feel a credstick under her fingertips, and closed grimy little fingers around it –

The teenager glanced down and his amber eyes widened. “Hey!” Xaja squeaked in alarm as she just yanked her hand out of his jacket, clutching her prize, and ducked from his grabbing reach. Then she was running back down the alley as fast as her little feet would carry her, glancing back only once to see the teenager and the grey-haired man hurrying after her – that scared her enough into ducking through a waste heap and scrambling into a transport crate. She dropped out of sight before the men could come around the corner, shaking like a leaf. One of the lessons she’d inadvertently taught herself with the Force after the Sacking came back to mind, and she focused on being very small and very invisible, just like a mouse. A mouse didn’t feel terror like this. A mouse could hide anywhere. She barely dared to breathe as she heard footsteps just beside her hiding place, listened to the sounds of the men looking through the trash for her before giving up and moving away again.

* * *

“How the kriff did she vanish like that?” Theron scowled as he followed Master Gilrad back out of the alley. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, and frowned when his left hand missed the feeling of the credstick that had been there three minutes ago. Shame at letting a pickpocketer rob him made his ears burn. Oh, wasn’t Marcus going to poke at him with this…

Gilrad frowned to himself as the two met up again with Marcus. “She got away. I suspect she’s Force-sensitive and knows how to use it, even if only instinctively.”

“A Force-user?” Marcus tapped his fingers against his chin. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve never seen a Force-blind child run that fast. And she knows how to hide – I couldn’t sense her presence by the time we turned the corner. She found somewhere in that waste heap to hide despite our efforts to find her.” Gilrad’s frown deepened. “She can’t have been more than ten years old…”

“Ten? I’d have said eight. She’s just a little kid.” Theron patted his empty pocket again. “Hell of a thief for her age…”

“Did anything stand out about her to you, Theron?” Marcus looked over at his young ward.

Theron blinked, then shrugged as he thought back. “… She looked really skinny. I’d guess she’s been a street kid for a long while. Probably hasn’t seen a shower in a long time either. I wonder where her parents are?”

“The odds are likely that she no longer has parents, lad. She may be a war orphan.” Gilrad started pacing back and forth. “If she’s stealing from people in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, then she’s either reckless or desperate, and the terror I sensed from her when you shouted, Theron, leads me to believe she’s not looking for a thrill. If she’s an orphan on the streets, she’s likely terrified and starving…”

“And the fact that you suspect she’s Force-sensitive doesn’t affect things at all.” Theron raised an eyebrow.

“If she is, then she’ll be taken immediately to one of the Enclaves. But even if she’s Force-blind, she needs to be taken off the streets. Hiding in rubbish heaps is no place for a little girl.” Gilrad nodded in determination. “Marcus, I hate to impose, but I suspect it will take more than just myself to catch her…”

“We’ll help,” Marcus agreed with a firm nod. “I’ll put a word out with the fort’s commanders. They might get lucky and catch her before we do.”

* * *

As it turned out, the little red-haired wraith already was known to the fort. “I know the kid,” grunted a Zabrak colonel. “She stole two days’ worth of rations from me!”

Theron barely stopped himself from making a face. If the kid was desperate enough to be stealing soldiers’ rations, she was definitely starving.  _Poor kid._

“That poor little ghost,” murmured a Cathar sergeant. “Caught her rummaging through a trash bin the other day. I would have actually given her a proper hot meal, but she saw me and ran like the Emperor himself was after her.”

“The ghost?” One of the merchants in the town, a pretty Twi’lek woman, tutted in pity. “She comes by here regularly. You just missed her by an hour, even.”

“Really?” Gilrad raised both eyebrows. “Have you spoken to her?”

“I’ve tried, but the poor thing’s mute, as far as I can tell. She knows a little bit of handspeak, enough to trade. I don’t pretend to not know how she’s getting the credits she keeps giving me…” and the Twi’lek looked a little embarrassed at that, “… but the only things she ever asks for are food.”

“And you haven’t tried to bring her in?” Marcus asked.

“She won’t let me near her. I’ve tried everything from food bribes to a blanket to outright offering to take her to help, but she just inches further away.” The Twi’lek sighed. “I don’t push it too far with her. I’m safe and I want her to know that, y’know?”

“I do,” Gilrad said with a nod. And when he finished thanking the Twi’lek and turned back to Marcus and Theron, there was the glint in his eye of a plan. “I suspect we’ll have to trap her somehow. We’ll leave the merchant out of this in case we fail…”

* * *

Theron leaned against the wall and did his best to keep a neutral expression on his face. It wouldn’t do to scare off the little ghost before the Jedi’s crazy plan to catch her could go ahead, after all. Marcus and Gilrad were both nearby, but out of sight, hoping to catch the little girl when she came for the bait.

And if she really was starving, the packaged meal sitting a few paces away from Theron should be irresistible bait. Kriff, it was making  _him_  hungry, and he’d had breakfast only a couple of hours before.

He settled down cross-legged, all gangly limbs and sixteen-year-old coordination, and rested his chin on his hands. Fort Garnik wasn’t a huge settlement, and all previous indications seemed to indicate that the girl was trying to keep her distance from all things military. That ruled out most of the places she could be hiding. But the idea of just passively setting a trap like this was dumb, in Theron’s opinion, and they were never going to catch the girl like this –

And go figure, that’s when he saw a little flash of matted red hair poking out from behind a trash bin. He stayed still as grimy little fingers appeared, then wide green eyes, ringed with dark shadows. The kid poked her head out and suspiciously looked at him, then at the food, then back at him. “Hey, it’s okay,” Theron soothingly said, and could have kicked himself when she ducked back behind the bin. “I just wanna talk. Okay?”

Long moments later, she poked her head out again and gave him a wary stare. Theron didn’t need the Force to feel the fear coming off her in waves. “I’m not even mad about the whole credstick thing,” he said with a small shrug, and watched her flinch. Yep, she recognized him from that. “Figure you probably needed the creds more than I do.”

The girl hesitated, and that made Theron tilt his head. “You understand Basic at all?” That earned a frown and hands on skinny hips. “Okay, guess that means you do. You talk at all?”

She hesitated again, and seemed to have to think about it before she shook her head. “No talking. Okay.”  _Mute from trauma?_ Theron wondered. “You got any parents?” She shrugged at that. “Huh. Okay. Got a name?” Another shrug. “… Okay. I gotta call you something, so how about Red?”

That made her eyes widen, then narrow as she stubbornly shook her head. Theron blinked. “What? What’s wrong with Red?” He looked down as she pointed right at him, then back up at her. “Oh. Am I Red? Is it the jacket?” She nodded, all seriousness on her drawn little face, and despite the situation Theron was hard-pressed to not laugh. “Okay… then some of the soldiers around here call you a ghost. That okay? Can I call you Ghost?”

She thought about it for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Okay. Ghost it is.” Theron nodded in agreement. “Gonna come get some lunch? It’s not gonna stay hot forever.”

Ghost seemed to think about it for a long minute, then warily stepped out, one little foot at a time. Theron watched as she shuffled over to him, stopped at the food… then promptly snatched up the container and scurried back to a safe distance. He nearly groaned in frustration until she sat down on the opposite side of the alley instead of vanishing into the shadows like he’d expected her to do. She glanced up at him suspiciously again, then apparently decided he and whatever he offered passed muster when she opened the container and started devouring the contents. It wasn’t much, just a serving of whatever the fort’s mess was serving that day; but to the clearly-starving child, it had to be a feast. Theron felt a twinge in his heart of immense pity for the child. Even after being turned out of the Order three years ago, he’d never been as hard-off as this little girl was. He’d made it to Manaan’s swoop racing tracks, and then had been picked up only months ago for the SIS. But this little girl…

“So,” he finally said as the child ate her meal, “are you Mantellian?” She looked up at him mid-bite, quirked an eyebrow curiously, then shook her head. “No, huh? Where are you from?” She shrugged at that. One little hand left the food to flash a sign at Theron that made him blink in confusion. “Huh?”

The child sighed, set the container down for a moment, and repeated the sign, slower this time. Theron frowned and squinted. “Sorry, Ghost… I don’t understand that.” She huffed, bright green eyes rolling skyward – apparently Theron was particularly thick-headed if he didn’t understand her hand gestures. She closed the lid on her meal container, set it carefully beside the wall where she was sitting, then crawled over to a patch of dust and started carefully tracing with her finger. When Theron shifted to his knees and looked over, he could see childishly-formed Aurebesh characters in the dust. So wherever she had come from, she had at least a little bit of education.  _C… O…. R… U…_ “Coruscant?”

She nodded emphatically, as though pleased he’d finally understood her, and repeated the first sign she’d made. Theron squinted at her fingers, then lifted his own hands and tried to replicate it. “Like that?”

The child facepalmed, then actually got to her feet and marched over to correctly position Theron’s hands. Apparently her annoyance with how poorly he was learning the sign language she used was enough to overcome her fear of him. Theron forced himself to sit still, feeling like he had a feral animal timidly approaching him and knowing that a sudden movement from him would send her scurrying away again, undoing all the progress he’d made so far. He let the child grab his hands and properly position his fingers, then held her own hands beside him and very slowly repeated the sign for him to follow. “Am I doing this right?” he asked as he tried the sign a few times over. If this was actually Galactic Sign Language and not a series of finger-movements the child had come up with on her own, knowing the sign for  _Coruscant_  had to be useful for his future career as a spy.

She critically eyed him for a moment, then shrugged as if to say he was passable. Theron grinned as she scurried back over to her meal container, this time bringing it a little bit closer to him. “So how does a master of sign language instruction go from Coruscant to Ord Mantell?” he asked, and immediately regretted it when her almost-cheerful mood dropped. A shadow fell over her narrow face, and her thin shoulders hunched as though she expected pain. She raised a hand to sign something at him, paused, glanced at the dust, then shook her head and shrugged. “Oh. Long story?” Theron guessed, and was answered with a slow nod. “Okay, forget I asked.” He waited while she ate a few more bites of food, then spoke again. “How old are you, anyway?”

Ghost looked up at him, then back down at her food, her brow furrowing. She looked back up at him and shrugged. “You don’t know? Do you know when your birthday is?” That got a nod, and she got back up to write in the dust again.  _15 Telona._  “Huh, that was only a month ago.” Theron watched as she looked up at him, obviously startled by that revelation. “Happy belated birthday, I guess?”

She looked down at her birthday in the dust, then back at Theron and frantically tapped her wrist. It was the universal request for the time, but Theron figured she wasn’t talking about the hour. “Today’s date is 5 Nelona, three years after the Sacking.” He worriedly shifted forward when she sat down hard in the dust, green eyes wide in shock. She raised three fingers at him in question, and he nodded. “Yeah, three years.” She looked back at her knees, then slowly raised her head to meet Theron’s gaze. She slowly pointed at herself, then raised all her fingers. “You’re ten years old?” Theron guessed, and was rewarded with a hesitant, disbelieving nod. “How long have you been sleeping rough?” He wasn’t surprised when she raised three fingers at him, but it did break his heart.  _Her parents must have died in the Sacking._ “I’m sorry, Ghost.” He’d been abandoned by Master Zho and the Jedi three years ago, but he hadn’t lost everything like she had.

She sat back down, hugging her knees to her chest, looking every bit the pitiful little street child. Theron shifted so he was resting his arms over his own knees. “Hey, so…” he started after a moment, and waited for her to look up at him, “you remember those adults I was with the other day?” She slowly nodded. “Listen… they saw you too, and they’re both pretty worried about you. Back alleys like this aren’t any place for a kid to be.” She shrugged at that, but didn’t deny it. “Do you want to come back to them with me, and we can maybe see about getting you somewhere safe and –?”

That apparently was an emphatically bad idea, judging by how fast she shook her head. Theron frowned in confusion. “Why not? You can’t like living in alleys like this, can you?” More head-shaking. “Then what’s wrong? Do they scare you?” An emphatic nod, paired with wide eyes that looked to be on the verge of tears. “Hey, it’s okay, Ghost. Neither of ‘em are gonna hurt you.” She didn’t look convinced, so Theron conspiratorially leaned in. “Wanna know a secret about one of them?” When she frowned in confusion, Theron winked. “The shorter dark-skinned one? His name’s Marcus, and he snores like a rancor.” That earned a tiny smile. “And I think he’s scared of mice.” The girl’s shoulders shook in what Theron suspected was a stifled giggle. “Would someone scary be scared of mice like that?” She hesitated, then shrugged.

Theron grunted as he rolled up to his knees and extended a hand out to Ghost, and tried to not feel a little hurt when she flinched. “What if I went with you and stayed with you the entire time? I’m not scary, am I?” She hesitated, and Theron offered her the most reassuring smile he could give her. “I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you, Ghost. I promise. I just want to help.”

Time seemed to drag on for a long while before Theron finally felt a grimy little hand in his. He gave her thin fingers a gentle squeeze as he carefully unfolded his uncoordinated limbs and got back up to his feet. He was tall for a sixteen-year-old, but beside this supposedly-ten-year-old, he felt like a giant. The girl was so much shorter than him, and maybe half his weight. Her little hand in his felt fragile, like she could break if he squeezed just a little bit. A sudden, fierce protective instinct settled into him, and he nodded to himself. Nobody was going to hurt Ghost while she was with him.

He turned toward the alley’s exit with his little red-haired shadow and started slowly walking. Marcus and Gilrad should have been listening to the entire exchange (and Theron knew he was going to be hearing about making up the story about Marcus being afraid of mice for a long time); the teenager kept an eye out for the spy or for the undercover Jedi. If anything, he was surprised neither of them had come out while he had been talking to the little girl…

* * *

Xaja needn’t have feared going into the fort or the populated areas of Fort Garnik with Red Jacket. Before they’d even made it out of the alley, one of the teenager’s grownups appeared – the grey-haired one with the jacket. “Ah, there you are, lad,” he said. His voice sounded gentle and friendly enough, but Xaja still froze in her tracks and tightened her grip on Red Jacket’s hand. No matter that he said these grownups weren’t scary, that he wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her… she still knew better than to trust anyone else on their word.

Grey Hair started slowly walking up to the pair, and Xaja turned back to watch him suspiciously. “And you seem to have made a new friend,” he said, his voice still light and easy. “I take it this is the little phantom who’s been causing commotion around the fort?” He started kneeling a few paces away; the motion made his jacket fall open, and a second later he frowned. Xaja didn’t see the worry in his eyes, or the way Red Jacket suddenly turned to look at her – all she could see was the lightsaber that Grey Hair had hidden under the garment.  _Sith,_ whispered a voice in her mind.  _Sith. Run!_  She couldn’t let herself be killed by a Sith, otherwise then the Jedi would be  _all_  gone for good! She could feel a scream building in her throat, a scream that had been three long years in the making.

But she couldn’t leave Red Jacket alone to face the Sith. Maybe the Sith had tricked the nice teenager somehow? She tightened her grip on the older boy’s hand and frantically pulled as she tried to run back down the alley and away from the confused-looking Sith. “What’s wrong, Ghost?” Red Jacket asked in confusion, and oh, Xaja wanted to cry in frustration when he wouldn’t follow her. Didn’t he know what type of danger they were in?! Didn’t he know what the Sith  _did_  to people?

The Sith shifted closer, and Xaja gave up on trying to save Red Jacket. She had to stay alive so the Jedi wouldn’t be completely gone. She let go of the teenager’s hand and whirled to flee… only to crash straight into the other adult’s legs, the one Red Jacket had called ‘Marcus’. He’d been waiting for her, apparently; Xaja felt a large pair of hands grab her shoulders before she could dodge around him and escape. A tiny scream did escape her then as she tried to squirm and bite her way free from his grip, but to no avail. The panic only got worse when she felt Red Jacket grab her hands. “Ghost, it’s okay!” he said, worry colouring his voice when she started hyperventilating. “Remember how I said I wasn’t gonna let anyone hurt you? They’re friends. They won’t hurt you–”

The Sith had tricked him, or he was working with the Sith. It was the only possible answer. Xaja squirmed one of her hands free of Red Jacket’s grip and pointed over his shoulder at the Sith, blurry as he was through the tears running down her face. “Sith,” she whispered, the first word she’d spoken in three years. “Sith!” He  _had_  to understand that! All the Sith  _did_ was hurt people, especially Jedi… and especially little Jedi girls who couldn’t fight back because they weren’t big enough for lightsabers.

There was a long, awkward pause. “I’m not a Sith, little one,” the Sith soothingly murmured as he shifted around to where Xaja could see him clearly, pausing when she flinched and whimpered again. “I’m a Jedi Master, child. My name is Master Gilrad –”

A Jedi Master? That was impossible. Xaja stubbornly shook her head. “No,” she whispered, her hoarse voice choked with tears and unreleased screams. “No Jedi. All dead.”

“We’re not all dead, little one.” The Sith sat down cross-legged. “There’s an entire planet of Jedi, and it’s called Tython –”

“Lies!” Xaja squirmed helplessly in Marcus’ grip as the tears fell faster down her pale cheeks. “All dead. I saw it!” She looked up at Marcus, then at a suddenly-horrified-looking Red Jacket, then back at the rapidly-paling Sith. “I saw it all!” The memories came rushing back to her: flames, smoke, red lightsabers overpowering the green and blue blades, screams of agony, brown-robed bodies across the marble floors of the Jedi Temple, the dead faces of everyone she’d known, the cruelty of the Sith attackers… she very nearly threw up right then. Wasn’t it enough that she saw the Sacking every night as it was?

“… Oh, Force, child.” The Sith seemed to slump in sorrow. “You were there, in the Jedi Temple. You survived it… and you think you were the only survivor.”

Doubt crept into Xaja’s heart. Would a Sith have sounded so sad? Wouldn’t a Sith have killed her already? She hesitated, then slowly nodded in response to the older man’s words – then emitted a stifled shriek and tried to hide behind Red Jacket as the Sith held his lightsaber out to the side. When he turned it on, the blade was green, not red… but what if he was a Sith who’d stolen the weapon of a Jedi he’d killed? She suspiciously eyed the lightsaber, then the Sith, almost forgetting entirely about Red Jacket and Marcus despite their grip on her. “Prove it,” she whispered, a trace of defiant courage sparking deep within again for the first time in so long.

The maybe-Sith sadly smiled at her, then closed his eyes – Xaja gasped when she saw a familiar golden light glow around him. She remembered some of the Masters showing that same light when they’d meditated in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, or in any one of the meditation chambers, or in the gardens when they’d been leading the Youngling classes through meditation exercises. The Force sang to her of hope and safety; she could feel nothing but the Light Side from the Sith, who she decided wasn’t a Sith at all. Then if he wasn’t a Sith, then he was…

She squirmed free of Marcus and Red Jacket’s grip and ran toward the Jedi. He opened his eyes just in time to catch her as she all but leaped into his arms, clinging to his shoulders and shaking as relieved sobs wracked her skinny frame. She could just hear gentle, soothing murmurings from the Jedi – hadn’t he said his name was Master Gilrad? – and feel a hand rub her back comfortingly as he carefully stood up, still holding his burden. She could hear him quietly talking to Marcus and Red Jacket before their Force-presences started moving away, and almost squirmed to get down so she could say goodbye to them properly. But this was safe, the safest she’d been in three years, and Master Gilrad was already walking in a different direction; no, she did not want to leave this. “Can you tell me your name, little one?” he asked once Xaja had calmed down a little bit.

The little girl took a shaky breath and whispered her name for the first time in three years. “Xaja… Xaja Taerich.”

“Good, lass.” She felt a gentle pat on her back. “There are still a few Jedi Enclaves left standing. There are a few students your age on Dantooine… and medical care that you desperately need. You’ll be surrounded by other Jedi in just a couple of days…”

 _Multiple_  Jedi Enclaves? The Order had survived the Sacking and the Sith’s attack after all? Xaja buried her face in Master Gilrad’s jacket and let herself quietly cry in relief. Three years of hiding and fighting for her life and living in terror were finally over.

* * *

“She was in the Jedi Temple…” Theron shook his head as he and Marcus watched Master Gilrad take the girl away. The Jedi’s guess that the thief was Force-sensitive had been more than correct – she’d been a student of the Jedi. She’d somehow survived the terrible Sacking, and three years of living rough afterwards – Theron wasn’t sure  _how_  the little girl had survived it, but she had, and he didn’t envy her in the slightest. “I didn’t think anyone who was in the Temple had survived.”

“Me neither. Nor did, I suspect, most of the surviving Order.” Marcus sighed. “I suspect she never found any other survivors either. If she thought everyone else had been killed and she was the sole survivor…”

“I would have been terrified too.” Theron looked back over his shoulder as the Jedi turned a corner and vanished. “You think she’ll be okay?”

“I know Master Gilrad. He’ll get her back to Dantooine, safe and sound, after you did the hard work of convincing her to trust you.” Marcus clapped a hand on Theron’s shoulder. “Good job, Theron. You likely saved her life with that.”

“Yeah, well, I think she bit me while she was trying to escape,” Theron halfheartedly grumbled. “Is there any way we can check up on her at all?”

“Likely not, given how protective the Jedi are of their students, but I’ll see what I can do.” Marcus winced and gingerly rubbed at his wrist where the girl had bitten him. “I think she'll be just fine.”

* * *

Marcus did try to keep up with the progress of the little Jedi girl, as did Theron. But over time, they lost track of the feisty little redhead, while Xaja was never able to find the identities of the nice teenager and his quiet not-father who’d helped rescue her from the streets.

It was well over a decade later when Theron looked up to see the pretty redhaired Master Taerich enter his and Darok’s planning room. Something about her green eyes and fiery temper seemed familiar… while Xaja spent hours in hyperspace focusing on the memory of his amber-hazel eyes and trying to remember where she’d seen them before. They’d belonged to someone warm and gentle…


End file.
